The truth about education

FatCat

FatCat

Well-known member
Can anyone explain to me the home schooling situation, perhaps there are some teachers on here who can cast some light on this.

from what I have heard and seen - school children are not given enough work, they seem to be missing out on education. I have a few friends of primary aged children and they say they get what amounts to a couple of hours work per week.

I see talk of home schooling by the parents as well.

In my simple head I thought that classes would be delivered via zoom or other conferencing facility and that schooling would go ahead daily albeit with the limitations taht delivery method brings.

I then see teachers complaining about being over worked and so on.

this is a question I’m not saying I believe the above but I just don’t understand for example how are teachers being over worked if school children are getting such little work to do.

no nasty comments required just an explanation from anyone who is closer to the subject matter than me.
 
My GF is a teacher, albeit for reception aged kids so the delivery is a bit different than for the older kids I think. But here is my view of her experience in the last few days...

Wanted to get her planning work done for the start of term over Xmas, but delayed and delayed because of the seemingly "inevitable" closing of schools. The issue being that planning for online delivery is very different than planning for classroom delivery.

Started on the planning the weekend before school starts as no announcement made, works all weekend, Boris says "send your kids to school!" so she's made the right choice - great!

Monday night - Boris says schools are closing, teach online. She has to redo all of the planning work for online delivery.

Tuesday-Thursday - the school is in chaos trying to get organised. Part of it is because they couldn't organise a p!ss up in a brewery but obviously the chopping and changing doesn't help. She's had to redo about half of her planning again because there's a lot more kids in school than they anticipated (about 200/600 rather than 50/600) and in order to teach them adequately they need to provide differentiated work (e.g. same lesson but for higher/lower ability students) and to make sure that the online work is more suitable to be used in a classroom.

On top of this, they are being told to ring parents of students who are not doing the work, provide thorough feedback to each student as they complete activities, and plan (online and in person) work for next week.

The issue is, basically, there is a lot more planning to do and a lot more follow-up/admin work to do to make sure they are reaching all the kids in a satisfactory way. They're unfamiliar with the platform and no-one really knows what they're doing.

This is on top of teachers being overworked in general - I really had no understanding of it before I met my GF, beyond hearing about it anecdotally. It is a brutal job, I would not advise my kids to be a teacher.
 
Matt said:
My GF is a teacher, albeit for reception aged kids so the delivery is a bit different than for the older kids I think. But here is my view of her experience in the last few days...

Wanted to get her planning work done for the start of term over Xmas, but delayed and delayed because of the seemingly "inevitable" closing of schools. The issue being that planning for online delivery is very different than planning for classroom delivery.

Started on the planning the weekend before school starts as no announcement made, works all weekend, Boris says "send your kids to school!" so she's made the right choice - great!

Monday night - Boris says schools are closing, teach online. She has to redo all of the planning work for online delivery.

Tuesday-Thursday - the school is in chaos trying to get organised. Part of it is because they couldn't organise a p!ss up in a brewery but obviously the chopping and changing doesn't help. She's had to redo about half of her planning again because there's a lot more kids in school than they anticipated (about 200/600 rather than 50/600) and in order to teach them adequately they need to provide differentiated work (e.g. same lesson but for higher/lower ability students) and to make sure that the online work is more suitable to be used in a classroom.

On top of this, they are being told to ring parents of students who are not doing the work, provide thorough feedback to each student as they complete activities, and plan (online and in person) work for next week.

The issue is, basically, there is a lot more planning to do and a lot more follow-up/admin work to do to make sure they are reaching all the kids in a satisfactory way. They're unfamiliar with the platform and no-one really knows what they're doing.

This is on top of teachers being overworked in general - I really had no understanding of it before I met my GF, beyond hearing about it anecdotally. It is a brutal job, I would not advise my kids to be a teacher.
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That’s an interesting insight - like I said I have no axe to grind against teachers , just some of the anecdotal stuff you hear makes you think what is going on.
 
I can assure you, even within schools a lot of teachers are thinking "what is going on!"

edit:
Personally, I think there can be a bit of a misconception around what is involved in teaching. It is something that we have all seen close up, being students ourselves at some points and therefore think we know how it works and what teachers do, but like all professions the devil is in the detail away from the user/customer/student - and it is the admin/paperwork/scrutiny side of teaching that seems to have exploded in the last decade

The thought that teachers "go home at half 3 and have the whole summer off" is so far wide of the mark it isn't funny
 
My two primary school aged children both have 2 zoom lessons in a morning and then have an afternoons worth of work to carry on with. On top of that they are expected to read, and the older one to do his timetables app. Hard to manage for us parents both trying to work, especially as the younger one is struggling to sit there on the lessons, and is fairly emoti8about the whole situation.

From my experience the school has been brilliant in very difficult circumstances and the teachers are doing a fantastic job. It's very difficult for us parents to manage but I'd rather have that than us being left on our own to try and teach them as was the case in last years lockdown.
 
Matt said:
I can assure you, even within schools a lot of teachers are thinking "what is going on!"

edit:
Personally, I think there can be a bit of a misconception around what is involved in teaching. It is something that we have all seen close up, being students ourselves at some points and therefore think we know how it works and what teachers do, but like all professions the devil is in the detail away from the user/customer/student - and it is the admin/paperwork/scrutiny side of teaching that seems to have exploded in the last decade

The thought that teachers "go home at half 3 and have the whole summer off" is so far wide of the mark it isn't funny
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Yes I think a lot of effort goes into the scoring of the schools and I fated investigations and that sort of thing - presumably schools want to be ranked higher and so on and so forth.
 
I have a daughter that is in yr9 (first year after her options) and I feel that the lvl of education is somewhat lacking this year.
I'm not in any way blaming the teachers as they are in a difficult place, but with this pandemic they are having substitute teachers in place a lot of the time that do not provide any continuity with the curriculum and lack any knowledge if an individual pupils needs.
She has been doing a lot of work over 'Teams' this week, however its not a substitute for being sat in a classroom and there is very little interaction between the teachers and pupils, again this is detrimental to the complete education package.

I need to stress that this is not the teachers fault, i think they are doing an outstanding job given the hand they have been dealt, but I do worry that my daughter is going to lose out on her education because of this pandemic and this is in turn going to affect her in the future.

I also have a certain amount of sympathy for those that are going to get 'made up' exam results. I think there will be employers that would certainly look at grades given for 2020/21 as fake results and would perhaps sway away from employing these kids in favour of those with genuine results!
 
My primary school child was given three workbooks covering English and maths to go through, and an activity grid (crafts etc).

No Zoom lessons, no contact with the teacher, no contact with classmates.
 
My daughter is year 5 and she has a full timetable of classes from 8:50 through to 15:10 each day.

We don't home school nearly as much as we did in the last closure where they were doing a few hours a day with teacher led eductaion. This time it is all teacher led.

The standard of delivery of remote education will depend on the schools prep for this. It seems, as we were in tier 4 and the south, my daughters school was fully expecting this and were better prepared than some, it would seem.

All that said, the school are doing teh best they can bit it is not a good substitution for face to face teaching, obviously.
 
Jonny2773 said:
I have a daughter that is in yr9 (first year after her options) and I feel that the lvl of education is somewhat lacking this year.
I'm not in any way blaming the teachers as they are in a difficult place, but with this pandemic they are having substitute teachers in place a lot of the time that do not provide any continuity with the curriculum and lack any knowledge if an individual pupils needs.
She has been doing a lot of work over 'Teams' this week, however its not a substitute for being sat in a classroom and there is very little interaction between the teachers and pupils, again this is detrimental to the complete education package.

I need to stress that this is not the teachers fault, i think they are doing an outstanding job given the hand they have been dealt, but I do worry that my daughter is going to lose out on her education because of this pandemic and this is in turn going to affect her in the future.

I also have a certain amount of sympathy for those that are going to get 'made up' exam results. I think there will be employers that would certainly look at grades given for 2020/21 as fake results and would perhaps sway away from employing these kids in favour of those with genuine results!
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I joke with my godson that he got a Covid A.
Hopefully it won’t be detrimental to your daughter in the long run, I f she goes into further education I expect the GCSEs grades will become less relevant.
Must be horrible for the kids at this time though!
 
I can sympathise with people worrying about the exam results and how that might hinder them in the future, but looking back my exam results were of almost no consequence apart from when applying for college/uni - and this year they will all be competing against other "Covid Grades" for college/Uni places

In years to come, no-one will take enough notice to think "This guy got an A in GCSE Maths, but it was the Covid year so he might not be that good". They'll just see "A" and move on I'd wager.

Again, not to take away from the worry about it - I just think in the long term it won't be much of an issue
 
I would agree Matt, my degree has been out of the envelope 3 times in 25 years. My mum looked at it, my wife looked at it and my current employer looked at it and photocopied it and saved it to my online documents along with every letter ever sent to me, payslip, P60 so they are a bit anal about documents.

No employer has ever asked to see.

If you go on to further education that is what employed will look at.
 
Matt said:
I can sympathise with people worrying about the exam results and how that might hinder them in the future, but looking back my exam results were of almost no consequence apart from when applying for college/uni - and this year they will all be competing against other "Covid Grades" for college/Uni places

In years to come, no-one will take enough notice to think "This guy got an A in GCSE Maths, but it was the Covid year so he might not be that good". They'll just see "A" and move on I'd wager.

Again, not to take away from the worry about it - I just think in the long term it won't be much of an issue
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👆 This
 
Laughing said:
I would agree Matt, my degree has been out of the envelope 3 times in 25 years. My mum looked at it, my wife looked at it and my current employer looked at it and photocopied it and saved it to my online documents along with every letter ever sent to me, payslip, P60 so they are a bit anal about documents.

No employer has ever asked to see.

If you go on to further education that is what employed will look at.
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I could have told all of my previous 5 employers that I have a PhD in Astrophysics and they'd be none the wiser :D
 
Matt said:
I could have told all of my previous 5 employers that I have a PhD in Astrophysics and they'd be none the wiser :D
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Really? the last couple of jobs Ive had have asked for it - plus for a contact at the university. Pretty much every job I’ve had come to think of it has needed it. I stopped putting the grade on my cv many years ago but I still get asked for the certificate.
 
FatCat said:
Really? the last couple of jobs Ive had have asked for it - plus for a contact at the university. Pretty much every job I’ve had come to think of it has needed it. I stopped putting the grade on my cv many years ago but I still get asked for the certificate.
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I had to provide a reference from uni when I started my first job, but even they didnt ask to see my degree
 
Way_Out_West said:
My primary school child was given three workbooks covering English and maths to go through, and an activity grid (crafts etc).

No Zoom lessons, no contact with the teacher, no contact with classmates.
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this is actually not allowed now. the education secretary said yesterday that they need face to face learning over zoom, teams etc. 3 hours per day in primary and 4-5 in secondary i think were the figures mentioned

my kids school gave us the "workbooks" in the original lockdown which was pretty good at the time.

they are now putting work on teams/equivalent but not actually delivering anything so the teachers are all having a bit of a jolly with it

the joys!! roll on 12 weeks when the schools open again!
 
Matt is exactly right. I myself am a qualified teacher and work for Teesside Uni, but am not directly in front of classes, and my wife is a college teacher. Both have found the move from campus to online exhausting. Lessons that have been planned for classroom delivery are now not fit for purpose and have to be adjusted to fit online delivery. Students all need training on the online platforms such as TEAMS/ZOOM/Google Classroom etc. Some of the more deprived families dont have the equipment to access these and are struggling to log in on time. Most turn up late and lessons are constantly interrupted. It is extremely difficult and i can see just as much going on in the background as there always was for classroom delivery. I would say my wife works 50+ hours a week most weeks, including weekends. Not including the social worker side of the job where she is expected to follow up on all absenteeism and students who seem to be struggling. Its no wonder that the teaching profession is losing staff on a daily basis.

Also, just to cover the point of supply teachers that was mentioned. This is greatly exaggerated because of the high level of staff having positive covid tests and are off work.
 
My experience is not great - I have two kids, one in juniors and one in seniors. They both get sent work to complete on their respective online platforms, neither of which are ideal for learning and comprehension of the subject matter and are pretty much left to their own devices to complete, which I'll admit neither are particularly motivated to do.

I'm not sure what else teachers can do as I do believe they have a thankless job in all of this, but I would love online Zoom type lessons, where the kids can be interactively involved and can ask questions in real time.

As it is now, just does not work for my family and even reading this forum, I can see I'm not alone. I am on month 10 of WFH in a really time demanding job, my partner works full time as a key worker and I just cannot give the kids the time and encouragement during the day that they both seem to need to get themselves going. The one in juniors gets 3 "lessons" per day - an online worksheet for Maths, English and one other topic for the day. My eldest is to attend lessons via TEAMS as per their normal timetable but rarely does and just logs on when they wake up and completes work around "playing" on the computer. We're past battling as it leads to more emotional outbursts for everyone in this horrible situation that none of us want, yet all find ourselves in.

The pressure (and guilt) is enormous, do I drop my working standards and level of output and potentially put my own job at risk to help motivate and ensure the future educational security of my kids or do I carry on with my work and let them do what they can and leave what they do not understand??

Impossible predicaments sadly.
 
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